“Well, maybe I don’t either,” Costis snapped. “Or I wouldn’t have taken a sacred oath to protect a man and then knocked him flat on his back.”
Aris snorted.
Costis paused to collect his temper. He had never felt so irrationally hot-blooded. He didn’t like the feeling, though he knew other soldiers often did. “What are you going to do?” Costis asked, and Aris could only shrug.
“Relius will know who delivered the message, if he doesn’t already. Tell the captain before Relius does.”
“What happens to my family, then?” asked Aris.
“What happens to you if you don’t tell the captain?”
Aris thought it over. “Maybe I should.”
It was Costis’s turn to shrug. He didn’t want to sound like a hypocrite. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”
“So, so, so,” said Aris, “at least my honor will be intact.”
“And that’s very important,” said Eugenides.
Aris and Costis both jumped at the sound of the king’s voice. He stood on the landing above them like an apparition. His dark hair melted into the darkness behind him, while the light of the lantern fell on the white linen of his shirt and the gold threads embroidered in his coat seemed to glow. After a brief moment of horrified paralysis, Aris leapt to attention. Costis had known the voice as soon as he heard it. He didn’t look at the king, but rather behind him, searching for the attendants that he thought must be there. He was a second later pulling himself to attention.
It was impossible that Sejanus would be downstairs talking about the king’s sleeping arrangements if he knew his lord was standing on the landing upstairs, but just as impossible that the king could be there without his attendants and without Sejanus’s knowing it.
Eugenides leaned forward and whispered into Aristogiton’s ear. “Speak to Teleus in the morning,” he said just loud enough for Costis to hear as well. Then he stepped behind the wall of the stairwell into the corridor that ran alongside it. There was no sound of footsteps. When Costis bent to look around the wall, the king was gone.
Costis woke the next morning before the dawn trumpets and dressed with a sense of dread, oddly familiar. It was the same feeling he’d had whenever he’d gone off to meet his tutor, having spent his day playing in the woods instead of preparing his lessons. Whatever happened this morning, the bruises, like the marks left by his tutor’s willow switch, would fade, and Costis was certainly no stranger to bruises. He tried to encourage himself with the thought that he could have been facing a hanging, not a beating. But it had never been the fear of bruises that sickened him when he faced his tutor, and he felt distinctly uncheerful as he walked toward the training ground.
He arrived early. No one spoke to him. The Guard ostracized those in disgrace. The captain did come to stand beside him, but did no more than nod a greeting. When the king came, he was accompanied by four of his attendants as well as his guards. He left them all at the entrance of the training ground and walked across the open space alone. He arrived at Costis and Teleus and nodded a greeting at them both. He had his practice sword with him and tucked it under his right arm in order to wave a hand in invitation. Costis winced. The captain would have thoroughly humiliated any of his own Guard who treated a practice sword so thoughtlessly.
“Shall we begin with the first exercise?”
Costis obediently assumed the stance for the simple practice of thrust and parry in prime. He knew that the king was not a soldier, but he was surprised that Eugenides had not at least mastered the basics with a sword. Perhaps he had lost his skill along with his right hand, but Costis thought the king should have adapted to fighting with his left. There had been time to learn since the queen had caught him traipsing through her palace and cut off his hand. Back when he was the Thief of Eddis, before he’d stolen the throne of Attolia as well as its queen.
Teleus dropped back and pretended not to watch. The rest of the Guard did the same. The flesh crawled between Costis’s shoulder blades.
“Your guard is low,” Eugenides said calmly, and Costis took his attention off the guards around him and looked at the king. Eugenides put one eyebrow up. Costis had to pull his chin down to stop his head from shaking in disgust. He wasn’t a very talented swordsman, and he didn’t have the experience of the veterans around him, but he was a damned long way further down the road than first exercises in prime.
Eugenides read his mind and smiled wickedly. Costis clenched his teeth, adjusted his sword, and fixed his gaze on the embroidered front of the king’s tunic.
The king didn’t move. Costis stood with his sword extended while the king stood with his own sword still tucked into his armpit. Costis’s arm and shoulder began to burn. The wooden practice sword was weighted to feel as much like a real sword as possible, and it was no joke to hold it extended as the moment stretched on, especially as his muscles were still stiff from hours of immobility the day before.
Finally the king stepped into position. He knocked Costis’s sword aside and completed the thrust, stopping just a bit before Costis’s breastbone.
“Again?” he said.
Costis returned to position. And so it went. The king may not have had the skill to engage in a pretend battle and give Costis the beating everyone in the Guard assumed he had coming, but the king could and did commence exercise after exercise only to leave Costis immobile in the middle of it, straining his muscles to keep his body motionless and to conceal the effort immobility demanded. He was determined not to let the effort show. He concentrated on the point of the sword held out in front of him and willed it to be still, as the least waver at its point would reveal his strain.
The king, after his first mocking smile, addressed himself to the practice as if it held his whole attention. His concentration was worse than the mockery had been. If he had laughed, Costis could have been angry and his anger would have given him strength, but Eugenides was almost preternatural in his calmness as he moved his sword for a thrust, back to a ready position, to the block, marked by the quiet tack as the swords hit, to the thrust, and to ready again. Tack, thrust, ready, tack, thrust, ready.
Costis wanted to throw back his head and howl. This was the king the gods had given Attolia?
At last, the men around them began to break off their exercise and move away. Costis expected every repetition to be the last, but the king seemed oblivious and only remarked, “Again?” after each.
The other soldiers had left. The only people on the open ground between the palace walls and the barracks were Costis, the king, Teleus, and the king’s attendants lounging near the entryway. One of the king’s attendants approached. He was taller than the king, about as tall as Costis, expensively dressed and heavily built.
“Your Majesty?” he said, in cool, arrogant tones.
Eugenides lowered his sword and stepped back from Costis to look around at the empty field. He looked up at the position of the sun.
“I see the day is passing,” he said mildly. “Thank you, Costis.” He nodded dismissal. Costis stepped back and almost stumbled. The king saw the hesitation and raised an eyebrow. Costis had no doubt that his concern concealed malicious delight. He bowed and strode away. Behind him he heard the king speaking to Teleus, but he didn’t listen.